


All Bets Lead to Silliness

by StoryTellingDoc



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Drabble, F/M, Fluff, Oneshot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-07
Updated: 2015-01-07
Packaged: 2018-03-06 13:33:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3136268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoryTellingDoc/pseuds/StoryTellingDoc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor always wins his bets, so he doesn’t hesitate to agree to a challenge from one Rose Tyler.  Too bad he loses…yes, too bad…</p>
            </blockquote>





	All Bets Lead to Silliness

**Author's Note:**

> Title: All Bets Lead to Silliness  
> Rating: Teen  
> Characters: Ninth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Bad Wolf  
> Genre: One-Shot, Picfic, Fluff  
> Summary: The Doctor always wins his bets, so he doesn’t hesitate to agree to a challenge from one Rose Tyler. Too bad he loses…yes, too bad…  
> Disclaimer: I do not own anything affiliated to Doctor Who, including (but not exclusive to) the Doctor, Rose Tyler, Captain Jack Harkness, and the TARDIS. This was written for entertainment purposes only.
> 
> Note: Originally posted on Tumblr with ficlet prompt from ceruleanbluesart

_"Bet you ten quid you’re wrong," the Doctor announced, confident in his assessment._

_"Nah, no way, mate. You never have any money!" Rose retorted cheekily. "You already owe me like thirty quid I’ve no hope of ever seeing." She grinned teasingly, her tongue peeking out between white teeth._

_He scowled slightly. “What do you propose we do to settle this, then?” the Doctor queried, his eyebrow raised in curiosity._

_Rose thought a moment. “If I win…”_

_He could see the sparkle of mischief light up her golden eyes as she came to her decision. The Doctor swallowed nervously._

_"… You have to paint my toenails. Pink." She added for emphasis, beaming smugly at the thought of the Doctor having to do something so domestic._

_"And if I win?" the Doctor asked, keeping his gaze level with hers._

_"That’s up to you, Doctor." Rose shrugged noncommittally. She knew she was right anyway._

He grinned broadly at her as he contemplated his options. He had the upper hand, of course, with his 900 years’ worth of knowledge about the universe and all it contained. It was coming up with an appropriate reward for winning their bet that threw the Doctor for a loop. He heard a snicker coming from his left, and gave the handsome and overly flirtatious Jack Harkness a glare. The American merely grinned in reply. He ran his hand over his closely shorn dark hair before answering.

“If I win,” he said, delighting at the thought, “you have to promise not to make me eat any more of your mum’s ‘culinary experiments’ forever.”

Rose crossed her arms across her chest defensively, and he was temporarily distracted by the way her forearms pushed her chest forward as if on display. The Doctor gave himself a mental shake and forced his mind on what his delectable companion was saying.

“Mum has just been lonely, Doctor, ‘specially since I’ve been traveling with you. When she said she was keen on learning to cook more things, you were the one who encouraged her!”

“I never would have done it if I thought I would have to eat any of it,” he replied with a slight air of arrogance. “Time Lords have an extraordinary sense of taste, you know. Every bite was worse than the torture the Torians threatened us with when we accidentally landed on their sacred temple grounds.”

“You landed, not we,” Rose retorted, her anger only half-real. “I was not the one trying to show up Jack after he mentioned he was the best time agent pilot there was.”

The Doctor did not miss the slight misting of his companion’s amber eyes as she gave the Captain a playful wink. Jack blew her a kiss, and was rewarded with a girlish giggle. He failed to hide the irritation from his voice as he replied, his Northern accent on full display.

“I was doing no such thing, Rose. I’ll have you know that he couldn’t come close to the way I drive this ship even on his best day.”

Jack suddenly made a strange sound, something that sounded suspiciously like a strangled chortle. The Doctor’s glare darkened, expecting some sort of snarky reply, but his male companion was smart enough to keep quiet. His female companion, on the other hand, teased him mercilessly.

“Mmmhmm,” Rose answered with just the hint of a smile. “You’re right, Doctor.”

“Of course I am,” he said, puffing his chest out unconsciously in a display of masculinity. “I always know the answer.”

A small bit of insecurity caused him to pause, his blue eyes searching hers for any sign of doubt on Rose’s part. He couldn’t stand the thought of his pink and yellow human not trusting him to keep her safe. She seemed to sense his shift in mood, and quickly gave him a tongue-touched smile in reply.

“Which brings us back to the bet, Doctor. You claim you know the answer to everything, and I say you don’t. I’ve already told you what I want if I win, so what about you? Doctor, what do you want?”

Something about the way she asked her question made something stir deep inside of him, something that he’s tried desperately to ignore since he saw Rose in period dress the night they met Charles Dickens. Despite his own verbal assertion, the Doctor had never seen her as just another ape, someone to show off to with their travels to far away worlds. No, in the months that they have been traveling together, it was Rose who opened up a whole new world of possibilities for him, one that brought him further away from his survivor’s guilt and horrible memories every single day. 

“Well, Doctor, I’m waiting,” Rose said, leaning into him ever so slightly, sending the scent of coconut drifting into his superior Time Lord nose.

The Doctor felt a moment of panic, unsure of how to respond. Well, his body knew exactly how to respond, and it involved pushing her up against the nearest wall and ravaging her, but that simply wouldn’t do. He was too old for her, too damaged, and outside of allowing himself the occasional pleasure of flirting with her, the Doctor knew he had no right to ask for anything more. He forced his mind out of the gutter and took a gulp of air.

“Er…Uh…well, I…” 

Rose raised an eyebrow, but kept silent. Jack, on the other hand, chose to bark out laughter this time around. The Doctor was too embarrassed to care, and instead put his energy into scrambling for a suitable choice, nearly sagging in relief as he heard himself reply in a surprisingly calm voice.

“If you won’t let me have my first choice, then fine. If I win, you will promise to stop trying to get me to wear something different all the time. I like my jumper and my leather coat…it’s me.”

“I know that you like your clothes, Doctor, but it wouldn’t hurt to try something new. I mean, there’s so many other things that would look good on you!”

The Doctor seized upon his chance to tease her back. “So…you’ve been thinking about helping me change clothes, have you?”

Rose turned an adorable shade of red as she sputtered. “I…I don’t…that’s not what I said!”

“Now who’s lying?” Jack interrupted, grinning suggestively at Rose. She threw him a warning look before turning and leveling a glare at the Doctor. Luckily for him, it quickly turned into a grin that matched his own as he wiggled his eyebrows at her. 

“So, do we have a bet?”

Rose pulled herself together and nodded solemnly as she extended a hand towards him. 

“It’s a bet.”

He wrapped his fingers around her hand, lingering for just a second longer than necessary as they smiled like loons at each other. Finally, when the Doctor heard Jack clear his throat he pulled away, tilting his head slightly.

“So, how exactly do you plan on proving that I don’t have the answers to everything?”

He grew a little worried at the suddenly scheming look on her face, and he briefly wondered if he’s made a big mistake. Rose gave Jack a devilish smile, and the blue-eyed Captain returned a knowing one. 

“What do you think, Jack?”

“I wouldn’t mind seeing our host knocked down a peg or two,” he replied casually.

She turned and ran out of the kitchen without saying a word, leaving him standing there, gaping in her direction as Jack looked on. In a flash, she was back and holding a box of what looked like some sort of board game.

“What’s this?” the Doctor asked, his curiosity getting the better of him.

“Just somethin’ Shareen gave me the last time we went back home. She was dating this American bloke and told me this was a game that they would play. Jack and I have been playing on our spare time.”

“A game? How is a game supposed to prove that I’ve got superior knowledge?” 

The Doctor suppressed the extra question hanging at the back of his throat. _And why wasn’t I invited to play?_

“Well, it’s a knowledge game of sorts,” Rose answered as she plopped down and opened the box and pulled out a long container of cards. “It’s called Movie Trivia Pursuit.”

“Movie Trivia Pursuit? Rose, you can’t be serious.”

“Look, you said you knew everything there was to know about the universe. That should include trivia. Are you admitting you don’t know everything?”

He narrowed his eyes at her, sitting there with an innocent look on her face. She was up to something, his Rose, and he started to realize that Harkness was likely involved. The Doctor froze at the way he referred to the pink and yellow human across from him. She was not his, and he had no idea where that came from. It’s not as if he would kill anyone that ever dared to lay a hand on her, or look at her in an unseemly way, or talk to her. That didn’t make her his, did it?

“Well, are you?”

“Am I what?” He blurted without thinking.

“Are you admitting you were wrong?”

“Huh? Oh, of course not, Rose. I said I know all the answers, and I do!”

Even as he spoke the words, the Doctor knew he walked into a trap. Still, his brilliant mind had gotten him out of much more troubling situations, so he straightened his shoulders and met Rose’s eyes with a determined expression. The corner of her mouth quirked up.

“Well, let’s just see how true that is then. Shall we start?”

After Jack nodded in confirmation, Rose pulled out the first card in the deck, glancing briefly up at him before turning her attention to the text.

“In what movie did rogue dinosaurs over-run an amusement park?”

He masked his relief by smirking. “That’s too easy. It was Jurassic Park.”

Rose let out a huff. “That was just the first question, Doctor. They’ll get harder.”

“Okay, my turn to ask a question,” Jack stated, pulling another card from the deck, this time about twenty cards into the pile. “Rose, what was the name of the character in Star Wars that carried a double-ended light saber?”

“Darth Maul,” she answered confidently. 

“That’s correct!” Jack announced as he jumped out of his seat. Rose joined him, and they bumped hips before giving each other a high five.

“What was that?” the Doctor demanded to know, pretending he did not feel the surge of jealousy at how at ease Rose was with the captain.

“It’s our victory dance,” Jack answered, his eyes telling the Doctor he knew exactly what was going on inside his head. “When one of us gets the answer right, we do the dance.”

“Yeah, it’s fun!”

Before he had time to think about it, the Doctor heard himself utter the unthinkable. 

“Why didn’t I get a dance when I got my question right, then?”

Two pairs of surprised eyes landed on his face, and he immediately felt his big ears heating up.

“You want to do the victory dance?” Rose asked slowly, her eyes trained on his ice blue ones. 

He sorted furiously through what remained of his rational mind as she started towards him, hoping to find a way to back out of the predicament he put himself into. 

“Victory dances are for silly apes,” he finally answered defensively as shook his head. “I would never stoop to something like that.”

“Right…because you don’t dance,” Jack inserted, eyes twinkling.

“Oh, just shut up.”

“Are we gonna play or what? I want to win my bet,” Rose stated, interrupting their glaring contest. 

The Doctor was glad to see Rose didn’t take offense to his ape remark. He waited for her to sit back down at a safe distance from him before continuing.

“Of course. It’s my turn, right?” He asked even as he was reaching for a card. After reading the text, he posed the question to Jack. 

“In what movie did photographer Robert Kincaid spend four days with a stranger in the 1960’s?”

Surprisingly, the American didn’t hesitate. “Bridges of Madison County.”

The Doctor gaped at him, completely flummoxed as to how the Captain could possibly know such an obscure piece of information when he didn’t. Jack shrugged with a toothy grin, and he had to refrain from growling at the man as he hopped out of his chair once more, gesturing for Rose to join him. His companion glanced over at him with hesitant eyes as she brought herself into standing position and performed the dance. The Doctor was both perversely happy about her consideration of his feelings and guilty for making her feel bad about something so mundane.

In an effort to move forward, he gestured at the deck. “It’s your turn again, Rose. You haven’t stumped me yet.”

His words brought a renewed fire in her eyes, and he smiled at himself as she purposely pulled out a card about a quarter of the way into the stack. Watching her eyes skim over the words, he knew he was in trouble when her eyes lit up like a Christmas tree.  
“Alright, Professor Doctor, here’s your question. In the 2008 movie starring James Marsden and Katherine Heigel, what was the name of the commitments section writer she loved?”

The question was greeted with silence as the Doctor froze, his infinite knowledge trumped by his inability to answer simple movie trivia. Rose had begged him on several occasions to watch various movies with her, but his fear of sitting on a couch so close to her that he could feel the heat radiating off her body and smell the fruity shampoo of the day scared him more than facing an entire fleet of Daleks. Now, he was beginning to regret his decision.

His shoulders sagged as he eventually gave in. “I…I don’t know.”

“Oh, oh, I know!” Jack jumped in, raising his hand as if he was in class.

Rose giggled. “Okay, Jack, what was the name?”

“Malcolm Doyle,” he said. “I remembered it from the other day when we watched it in the media room.”

“That’s right!”

“That doesn’t count for him,” the Doctor complained. “It was my question.”

“Oh lighten up, Doc. It’s Rose’s turn now.”

Jack ignored the Doctor’s glowering as he picked out a card and read it out loud to Rose. 

“What was the name of the alien species in Star Trek: The Next Generation who would make love at the drop of a hat…any hat?”

“You made that up!” The Doctor shouted as he observed Jack’s lascivious glance at his Rose. 

“I did not!” Jack handed over the card to him to look at, pointing at the text. “It says so right here on the card.”

He grumbled as he realized that the American was right, but being a proud man, he couldn’t admit to being wrong. Instead, he crossed his arms and pouted like any grown man would.

“So, Rose, do you know the answer?”

The Doctor nearly came unglued as Rose licked her lips before chewing on the bottom one in thought. _iGet ahold of yourself, for crying out loud,_ he chided himself silently. _Don’t be a dirty old man._

Rose let out a dramatic sigh as she shook her head. “I have no idea. I wasn’t much of a science fiction fan in school.”

Jack raised an eyebrow as he directed the same question to the Doctor. 

“What about you? You have any idea?”

Despite giving him his best Oncoming Storm scowl, the captain seemed unfazed.

“Okay then, no one gets this one,” he commented as he pointed at the cards. “You’re up again, Doctor.”

Trying not to be a poor sport about things, he snatched a card out of the deck. “Approximately how many people were saved in Schindler’s List?”

Jack’s face scrunched as he considered the question. “I think it was around eleven hundred people.”

“Correct,” the Doctor conceded. He turned and looked over at Rose. “Your turn again.”

The questions continued in this cyclical pattern for another thirty minutes before the Doctor couldn’t take any more. He had been soundly beaten by Rose, who had the most right answers, and Jack took second place with only two less correct. He himself had been so disparaged by the time they declared her the winner that he could barely look her in the face. The Doctor knew that rationally, this silly game was not a true reflection of the vast information stored in his mind, but seeing the unadulterated joy on Rose’s face as she crowed in victory provided the balm to his wounded ego.

“Well, that was fun. I think I’ll go back to my room and freshen up,” Jack stated after a quick glance his way. “You two have fun.”

“Well,” the Doctor said, dragging the word out slowly.

“Well,” his companion echoed, a cheeky grin on her face. “I think we know what that means.”

“You know what, I forgot! Tonight’s the night I have to do some…er…maintenance on the ol’ girl. Sorry, Rose!”

He had barely stood up and made it two steps before he felt a tug on his arm. He took a deep breath and turned around to face his irate human.

“Oh no you don’t, Doctor! A bet’s a bet! You owe me a pedicure!”

“But Rose…” 

She shook her head firmly. “You gave me your word.”

The way she widened her eyes and looked up at his face so enticingly broke down his defenses. He sighed heavily.

“Fine, but I really do have to take care of some things for the TARDIS.”

“Great! You have an hour!”

_That evening, much to his chagrin, the Doctor found himself settled on the jumpseat with his gloating companion, a bottle of electric pink polish, and a staunch refusal to admit he liked handling her delicate feet as much as he did._


End file.
